Mansfield Town owner John Radford has been fined almost half a million pounds after his insurance business breached rules surrounding handling of client money.

He was ordered to pay £468,000 by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), while One Call Insurance – the company he founded 23 years ago – was fined a further £684,000.

The FCA has also imposed a restriction barring the car, van and home insurance broker from charging renewal fees to customers for 121 days in a move expected to cost the firm about £4.6m.

It made the judgement after saying One Call did not arrange “adequate protection” for its client money and inadvertently spent £17.3m of it on paying directors, financing working capital requirements and to capitalise a connected company called One Insurance.

But Doncaster-based One Call has apologised for what it called a "genuine" procedural error, which it flagged up to the FCA four years ago.

The financial watchdog said in its decision notice that poor controls meant the company failed to appreciate that customer premiums paid under certain policies qualified as client money.

One Call later repaid this money, which was collected between January 2005 and September 2014.

The FCA criticised Mr Radford for a “lack of competence”, banning him from having any responsibility for client money or insurer money in relation to regulated activity in financial services.

He remains chief executive but relinquished responsibility for client money in September 2011.

In the decision notice, the FCA said: “In the FCA’s view, Mr Radford failed to carry out his responsibilities with due skill, care and diligence.

“For example, he failed to keep himself informed of changes to regulatory requirements for handling client money and, when warned by One Call’s auditor that it might not be complying with such requirements, failed to investigate or ensure that One Call acted on those warnings.

“The FCA also believes that Mr Radford failed to ensure that One Call established robust systems and controls for assessing whether effective risk transfer agreements with insurers were in place so that if any client money shortfalls arose as a result of One Call’s failure, insurers rather than customers would bear this risk.”

Mansfield Town Chairman John Radford

Both One Call and Mr Radford had their fines reduced by 30 percent, from £977,147 and £669,531 initially, after agreeing to settle at an early stage of the investigation.

In a statement, the company said it realised an error had been made in early 2014 relating to client money calculation and immediately reported it to the FCA, before rectifying the client money deficit.

It has since strengthened its board of directors, as per recommendations by the FCA.

Mr Radford bought Mansfield Town, who currently occupy the third automatic promotion place in League Two, in 2010 for £1 from three Stags fans – Andrew Perry, Andrew Saunders and Steve Middleton – who had taken over from previous incumbent Keith Haslam.

He and wife Carolyn Radford – Mansfield’s CEO and a director of One Call Insurance – have been praised for turning around the club’s fortunes on and off the pitch.

They won promotion from the National League in 2013, while the £1.1m losses incurred that year were reduced to only £10,000 in the 12 months to June 2016 – with expectations of breaking even in the next accounts.

Mr Radford plans to build a hotel next to the club’s Field Mill stadium and has also lined up a top operator.